Survival of the Fittest: Social Media’s Influence

on the Relationship between Traditional Media

and the Public

Katelyn Elizabeth Brooks

Abstract
Despite the innovations and emergence of digital and social media technologies, the influential
Agenda-setting theory developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972 has remained
relatively unchanged. Many analysts still operate under the assumption that the media agenda has
a greater influence on the public agenda. With the rise of social media, however, the possibility
for reverse agenda-setting needs to be more seriously considered, especially in light of recent events
surrounding the Trump University lawsuit, the 2016 presidential election, and the relative success
of the #NoDAPL protests. Because of modern technological capabilities in social media, the basic
premise of Agenda-setting theory is no longer accurate. This paper serves as a critique of existing
theoretical models of Agenda-setting by analyzing recent developments in social media.

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The assumption of Agenda-setting theory that media influences the public

agenda has become an outdated and inaccurate theory because of innovation within
social media platforms. The majority of Americans use social networking platforms,
enabling them to post whatever thought comes to mind for friends, family, and
strangers alike to view (Perrin, 2015). Two main types of media sources are social
media and traditional news media. Traditional news media, typically synonymous
with cable news programs, are both older and less interactive than social media plat-
forms found exclusively through internet-accessible devices. Social media platforms
have been made available to use at the tip of nearly everyone’s fingers through an
influx of smartphones (Smith, 2015). Many traditional news sources have adapted
to the smartphone by creating different applications (apps) for users to download.
However, downloading separate news-source apps can be inconvenient to users
due to their device’s storage capacity limits. Limited storage and the versatile nature
of smartphones lead users to seek that same storage-saving versatility in their apps
and are twice as likely to use search engines and aggregators for news consumption
(Media Insight Project, 2014). Unlike traditional media, social media platforms have
capitalized on this, which is why, as of 2016, 62 percent of American adults receive
much of their news from social media platforms (Gottfried & Shearer, 2016). In
order to adapt to the convenience and efficiency of search engines and aggrega-
tors, social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have developed
“trending stories.” Snapchat, for example, has introduced “Snap-stories,” which
display news stories and historical events such as the 2016 presidential election and
“Live Story” videos collected from the front lines in Iraq (Flynn, 2016). While tradi-
tional news mediums have attempted to adapt to the proliferation of digital media,
they find that they are less capable of acting as gatekeepers for news information
(Nielson & Sambrook, 2016).
Social media, compared to traditional news, has greater influence on the
spread of information because it offers direct involvement with current issues
(Mitchell, Gottfried, Barthel & Shearer, 2016; Vu, 2014). Recent examples of the
public overpowering and forcing the media to redirect focus via social media in-
cludes traditional news networks’ attention given to the settlement of the fraud case
against Trump University (BBC News, Nov. 2016), the 2016 presidential election

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 Survival of the Fittest: Social Media’s Influence on the Relationship between Traditional Media and the Public

coverage (Confessore & Yourish, 2016), and protests to halt construction of the
Dakota Access Pipeline (Rott & Martin, 2016). Because of increased civic engage-
ment through social media, the premise of a media-influenced public agenda is no
longer an accurate representation of American society. Whereas communication
theorists once argued that mass media set the public agenda, social media con-
sistently proves that this is no longer the case. This paper serves as a critique of
existing theoretical models of Agenda-setting through recent developments in social
media.
Developments in Agenda-setting Theory
Agenda-setting theory is consistently held as one of the most studied theories of
mass communication since its inception with the 1972 Chapel Hill study by Max
McCombs and Donald Shaw (Lycarião & Sampaio, 2016). The basic premise of
Agenda-setting theory is that mass media influences a topic’s salience for the public.
According to McCombs and Shaw, the media “may not be successful much of the
time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its read-
ers what to think about” (McCombs & Shaw, 1972, p. 177). In the Chapel Hill study,
McCombs and Shaw provided evidence supporting the strong correlation between
public and media agendas, concluding that the public agenda was more likely to
adopt pronounced issues in the media as a reaction.
The assumption that the public agenda is more likely to adopt issues from
the media agenda was best exemplified through the Watergate Scandal in 1972.
News sources were integral to keeping the public informed as the Scandal unfold-
ed, particularly the Washington Post’s journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
whose investigative journalism left a lasting impact on the journalism industry
(Giuffo, 2001). By publishing updates on the Watergate Scandal, the Washington Post
influenced the public agenda. After analyzing events like the Watergate Scandal, Mc-
Combs and Shaw determined that every media sensation followed a similar pattern.
They developed a formula that accurately depicted the relationship between media
and public agenda:
repeated reporting by media sources ➞ public reaction
“Public reaction” does not mean public agreement (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). As
seen in the Watergate Scandal, 57 percent of the public thought that Nixon should

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be removed from office while 24 percent approved of him even as he resigned on

August 8, 1974 (Kohut, 2014). McCombs and Shaw argued that media influences
what is discussed, not how it is discussed or the various conclusions the public will
infer about the events.
Media, however, is constantly evolving. At the time of the Chapel Hill
study, television was controlled by only three channels; researchers reviewed the
two largest of the three news broadcasts on different channels owned by different
companies, as well as multiple newspapers and news magazines (McCombs & Shaw,
1972). In comparison, modern technological capabilities allow for more than three
channels to broadcast news and entertainment. According to the United States’
Federal Communications Commission, as of November 2016 there are 1,781 full
service television stations, as well as the daily creation of new internet websites
devoted to both broad and specialized news topics. Additionally, most media outlets
are now available to people in the palm of their hands through handheld smart-
phones. These inventions and innovations were impossibly far-off to McCombs
and Shaw whose initial study helped developed Agenda-setting theory. Nevertheless,
Agenda-setting theory was never intended to be static; the theory is designed to
be flexible. McCombs, Shaw, and Weaver (2014) have recently discussed Need for
Orientation (NFO) and Agendamelding as two new directions that can be explored
relevant to Agenda-setting theory.
NFO is nearly as old as McCombs and Shaw’s Chapel Hill study and was
first introduced in 1973 by McCombs and Weaver (McCombs & Weaver, 1973).
NFO is defined as “a combination of relevance and uncertainty” (McCombs, et
al., 2014, p. 784), and posits that traditional news media ought to include informa-
tion that is relevant and understood by a particular audience (McCombs & Weaver,
1973). NFO states that to successfully dictate the public agenda, media must take
the public’s context into consideration. Without taking the public’s context into
consideration, the information the media provides will be largely irrelevant (Mc-
Combs & Weaver, 1973). For example, very few individuals in a suburban neigh-
borhood in Indiana are likely to care about food standards in Portugal regardless of
how often the media discusses them. Unfortunately, there is little research on NFO
and its interaction within Agenda-setting theory. Recent research includes Matthes’

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scale, which is based on three dimensions of NFO: “NFO towards an issue; NFO
towards specific aspects or frames of an issue; and NFO in regard to journalistic
evaluations” (2006, p. 429). Matthes’ scale differs from the earlier accepted two
dimensions (relevance and uncertainty) by focusing more on relevance, facts of the
issue, and the reporting of the issue and facts (Matthes, 2016; Chernov, Valenzue-
la, & McCombs, 2011). Matthes’ scale has since been validated in an experimental
comparison of Matthes’ three dimensions and earlier two dimensions (Chern-
ov, Valenzuela, & McCombs, 2011). By accounting for how an issue is reported,
Matthes’ scale acknowledges the importance of the media source as it pertains to
traditional media, but it does not explicitly account for messages shared through
social media by friends and family or those not included in journalistic evaluations.
Despite the shift in dimensions, the primary concept remains that the media must
provide information relevant to the public they are targeting.
Similarly, Agendamelding reveals how closely correlated and aligned the
public and media agendas are (McCombs, Shaw & Weaver, 2014), and is one of
the most recent advances in Agenda-setting theory. For the media to be successful
in dictating the public agenda, “the correlation between media and public needs to
have some reasonable level of agreement” (McCombs, Shaw & Weaver, 2014, p.
794). If the media can predict the audience’s degree of interest in public issues, then
it could tailor its message, which would create a reverse agenda-setting effect. There
are two major axes of Agendamelding: vertical and horizontal. Vertical media agen-
da-setting is that of the civic communities—i.e., it represents all members of those
communities. Horizontal media agenda-setting, on the other hand, represents per-
sonal communities; it gravitates towards personal interests. For example, 1930s Nazi
Germany had a high correlation between public media (vertical axis) and personal
media (horizontal axis) due to the firm restrictions on media that punished deviation
(McCombs, Shaw & Weaver, 2014).
According to McCombs, Shaw, and Weaver (2014), Agendamelding can be
condensed into a formula that blends civic community agendas, personal communi-
ty agendas, and individual interests, experience, and beliefs:
Agenda Community Attraction (ACA)
= Vertical Media Agenda Setting Correlation (squared)

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+ Horizontal Media Agenda Setting (squared) + Personal Preferences

The vertical media agenda-setting is the preliminary correlation for the social system
correlation being measured. The horizontal media agenda-setting measures the
correlation between individuals and more personalized media sources. Horizontal
media is impossible to measure because of its breadth of possible sources, but it
can be estimated by determining what is not accounted for by vertical media. If
both vertical and horizontal media correlations were 1.00, researchers could perfect-
ly predict the salience of issues to the public. Unfortunately, a perfect correlation is
untenable since it is difficult to predict public interest (McCombs, Shaw & Weaver,
2014).
More recently, researchers have been exploring the impact digital platforms
have had across sub-disciplines of communication and increasingly in setting public
agendas (Morgan, Shanahan & Signorielli, 2015; Hyun & Moon, 2016; Jeffres, 2015;
Lycarião & Sampaio, 2016). Specifically, Lycarião and Sampaio (2016) have attempt-
ed to reimagine Agenda-setting theory as an interactional and cyclical process be-
cause of the recent impact and influence of digital communication. Based on results
from the 1972 Chapel Hill study, researchers believed that the media influenced the
public agenda more often than the public influenced the media agenda (Wu & Cole-
man, 2009). Today, however, hashtags, memes, videos, and pictures that are instantly
sharable and find their way into the mainstream media can go viral and receive
coverage on par with “real” news. In 2011, Jaewon Yang and Jure Leskovec tracked
social media data (Tweets, blog posts, and news media articles), and their “results
hint that the adoption of quoted phrases tends to be much quicker and driven by a
small number of large influential sites” (Yang & Leskovec, 2011, p. 185). Thus, if an
artifact is easily sharable, it has a greater potential to go viral.
Although Agenda-setting theory has evolved since the Chapel Hill study
by developing and expanding with the introduction of NFO and Agendamelding,
its premise has remained relatively unchanged. Many analysts still operate under the
assumption that the media agenda has a greater influence over the public agenda.
The possibility of reverse agenda-setting is not denied by researchers but has not
been adequately investigated. Because of modern technological capabilities in social
media, the basic premise of Agenda-setting theory is no longer accurate. Thus,

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researchers should revisit Agenda-setting theory to determine the extent of the shift
of influence between the media and public.
Development in Media
Because media technology is constantly changing and evolving, the Chapel
Hill study is no longer an accurate reflection of modern news consumption. Within
the past 10 years, more and more people receive news information second-hand
through social media platforms on a smartphone application. According to the Pew
Research Center, at least 64 percent of American adults owned a smartphone in
2015 (Smith, 2015). Additionally, of those adults, younger adults (ages 18 to 29),
those with low household incomes and low levels of educational attainment, and
non-whites are more likely to have a higher rate of dependence on their smartphone
(Smith, 2015). Smartphone companies quickly adapted existing social media plat-
forms like Facebook onto their operating systems, thus solidifying the smartphone
as a tool of connectivity and communication. Additionally, according to a separate
Gallup Poll in 2015, 44 percent of Americans upgrade their phones approximately
every two years when their cellphone contract expires, while 54 percent of people
upgrade their phone when it stops working or becomes obsolete (Swift, 2015). The
technological boom turned the luxury item of a personal computer into a common-
place object which grew to connect the world digitally.
Unlike traditional media, social media platforms are not stable entities.
Myspace was launched in August of 2003 and was most popular between 2005
and 2008, but it was surpassed by Facebook within a year after Facebook launched
publicly in 2006 (Albanesius, 2009). To stay relevant, social media platforms must
avoid stagnation. Since 2012, Facebook has updated its code twice a day to be as ef-
ficient as possible (Protalinski, 2012). After its boom in popularity from 2008-2009,
Facebook has added video and text chat, live video streaming, a “marketplace” for
users to sell unwanted items, and different “reactions” beyond just “liking” the post.
Platforms such as Myspace and Google+ are not as successful as Facebook be-
cause they did not adapt quickly enough, whereas Facebook has continued to grow
in popularity because of its willingness to reinvent itself (Albanesius, 2009; Cantil,
2016). Social media platforms must continue to adapt to the ever-evolving audience
and user base to avoid becoming irrelevant like Myspace or Google+.

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Facebook’s level of continued success is currently unprecedented. Other

social media platforms, however, have begun competing with Facebook and with
each other. Examples of the evolution of social media technology can be seen
in the constant introduction of new social media platforms. The first recognized
social media site was Six Degrees, introduced in 1997. Six Degrees failed due to
inadequate internet infrastructure, poor access to an internet connection, and an
unreliable user-base. (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Similarly, in 2001, Ryze—one of the
earliest versions of online resume and job application websites—experienced early
modest success because it was marketed toward business professionals rather than
purely social relationships (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). LinkedIn, however, became more
successful than Ryze because of additional features that benefitted companies who
used the LinkedIn platform (Boyd & Ellison). Similarly, although Myspace still exists
and maintains users, it fell from prominence despite several re-design attempts (Al-
banesius, 2009). In contrast, Facebook was launched in 2004, made public in 2006,
and has remained the most important major social networking platform (Gottfried
& Shearer, 2016). Facebook has maintained its user base for nearly a decade because
it has avoided stagnation and obsolescence through constant platform updates. Fol-
lowing Facebook’s lead, there has been an explosion of new social media platforms,
including Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. The rise and fall of media platforms,
however, also affects traditional media. Traditional media has had to survive by
remaining relevant to its existing audience, making itself available through emerging
digital platforms, and by adapting to new and younger audiences whose primary
form of media consumption occurs through the fluctuation of the social media
landscape (Nielson & Sambrook, 2016).
The inevitable adapt-or-die climate for media platforms can be explained
through the concept of Technological Convergence. Although researchers have
traditionally used Technological Determinism to explain shifts in technology,
Technological Convergence provides a more nuanced and accurate explanation of
the processes technology and media undergo as they adapt to new audiences. For
example, according to Technological Determinism, new media sources are created,
mature, and then evolve to survive, while preexisting forms of media must adapt to
the emergence of new forms (Lehman-Wilzig & Cohen-Avigdor, 2004). The natural

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life-cycle of inventive and innovated media is comparable to biological functions,

such as evolution (Lehman-Wilzig & Cohen-Avigdor, 2004). A new species (i.e.,
media invention/innovation) arrives and either competes for resources (i.e., the
audience) or fills an empty ecological niche. Technological Convergence, however,
complicates the evolutionary analogy by analyzing the changes the new and old
media would undergo while competing and/or filling a niche (Lehman-Wilzig &
Cohen-Avigdor, 2004). On a broader scale, this phenomenon is observable in the
creation of interdisciplinary industries such as information and communication
technology (Hacklin & Wallin, 2013). Technological Convergence argues that new
media does not simply replace the preexisting media, but by virtue of its adapta-
tions, it forces older forms to change.
More traditional media sources, while having the advantage of being
regarded as news-bearers, are not immune to becoming irrelevant as seen through
audience consumption according to recent research studies (Mitchell, Gottfried,
Barthel & Shearer, 2016; Gottfried & Shearer, 2016; Nielson & Sambrook, 2016).
Since the mass production of televisions, individuals have adopted a preference for
learning news through a screen such as a television or a computer (Mitchell, et al.,
2016). According to the American Press Institute, as of 2014 the overwhelming
majority of Americans prefer to consume their news directly from news organiza-
tions (92 percent) and through television (87 percent). However, when the same poll
was replicated in 2016, preference for receiving news through television fell to 57
percent (Mitchell, et al., 2016). Upon further analysis of 2016 data, there are signif-
icant discrepancies of source preference correlated with age. Preference for tradi-
tional news platforms (television and print newspapers) is strongest in older audi-
ence members while online platforms are strongest with younger audience members
(Mitchell et al., 2016). More specifically within online news, social media has become
increasingly more popular as an avenue for news consumption. In 2016, 62 percent
of American adults received news via social media, an increase from a similar 2012
study which reported only 49 percent (Gottfried & Shearer, 2016). Facebook is
the most prominent social media site, reaching nearly 67 percent of U.S. adults, as
well as the leader in social media news with about two-thirds of users getting their
news via Facebook (Gottfried & Shearer, 2016). Market researchers predict that

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online news sources, will eventually surpass traditional news sources similar to how
television surpassed print news sources (Nielson & Sambrook, 2016). As a result,
the power of traditional media to function as news gatekeepers or agenda setters is
waning with the consistent rise of new and evolving social media platforms.
One reason social media platforms have drastically altered media, espe-
cially news, is that users are directly engaged with each other regardless of distance
(Mitchell, Gottfried, Barthel & Shearer, 2016). They are no longer passive audience
members simply reading or watching news being reported. While most adults still
commonly share news by word of mouth, sharing news digitally becomes more
frequent the easier it can be shared (Mitchell, et al., 2016). Users control the spread
of news via their own social media page, which enables every user to act as a com-
mentator. In other words, social media users become news reporters because of the
nature of social media communication. Currently, traditional news sources are in
the beginning stages of recognizing and adapting to the shift of social media acting
as gatekeepers of news by developing their own social media pages across various
digital platforms (Nielson & Sambrook, 2016).
A further development in the way social media affects traditional media
outlets is the creation of news sources from digital platforms. These types of news
sources can be categorized as digital pure players that focus primarily on building
an audience to distribute through platforms like Facebook and YouTube (Nielson
& Sambrook, 2016). Examples of digital pure players include Occupy Democrats
(Nunberg, 2011) and Tomi Lahren (Wendling, 2016). The newsworthiness of digital
pure players stems directly from the fact that they exist exclusively on digital plat-
forms. Modern technology has created a digital landscape that would have been
unimaginable to the Agenda-setting theory creators in 1972. Researchers, therefore,
must account for the new possibilities created by new media platforms and evaluate
their consequences in light of the theoretical status quo of Agenda-setting theory.
Implications of Developments
Because of social media’s ability to involve the public, traditional media is
no longer able to set or control the public agenda because the audience now
influences aggregators and algorithms1 (Vu, 2014). Civic engagement, for example,

1 Social media relies on aggregators and algorithms that display content per-
sonalized for the user based on how the user interacts with prior content.
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has increased because users can easily post and respond to online petitions, calls for
action, and virtual gatherings to show solidarity and to protest (Yu, 2016). The lack
of gatekeeping and increased civic engagement can be seen recently in three specific
instances in ascending order of importance: the unsuccessful subconscious over-
shadowing of the Trump University court settlement, the direction of presidential
campaign issues, and the involvement in protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
On November 18, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump settled the fraud
case against Trump University for $25 million, which was reported by BBC News
(BBC News, Nov. 2016). That evening, Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended
a showing of Hamilton: An American Musical. Following the performance, the actor
playing Aaron Burr, Brandon Victor Dixon, delivered a message to Pence calling for
the future Trump administration to “uphold our American values and to work on
behalf of all of us” (see Mele & Healy, 2016). The next day, on November 19, news
stations covered Donald Trump’s tweets about the speech to Mike Pence, where
he claimed that Pence was “harassed” by the cast; then on November 20, Trump
tweeted that the cast and producers “should immediately apologize to Mike Pence
for their terrible behavior” (BBC News, Nov. 2016; Mele & Healy, 2016). Despite
the popularity of the Hamilton incident, Figure 1 demonstrates that the “Trump
University settlement” was searched using Google2 more often than “Hamilton cast
to Mike Pence” at their respective peaks on November 19 and 20:

2 Google, Inc. provides information on the relative frequency of terms

searched on Google search engine. Individuals can go to https://www.google.com/
trends/ and enter any term(s) into the “Explore topics” search bar and the fre-
quency relative to its peak and duration of Google searches of the specific term(s),
punctuation and capitalization included, will be created in either a line or Cartesian
graph depending on the amount of terms searched.

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In addition to a general Google search, Fox News and CNN coverage of both
events were also examined because of their documented partisan biases (Weath-
erly, Petros & Christopherson, 2007). When searching the Fox News results using
“Trump University settlement site:foxnews.com” on Google, 571 results appear
(see Appendix). In contrast, when searching the Fox News results using “Hamilton
cast site:foxnews.com” on Google, 3,560 results appear (see Appendix). A similar
disparity occurs on CNN’s website: 1,620 results appear for “Trump University
settlement site:cnn.com,” while 3,590 results appear for “Hamilton cast site:cnn.
com” (see Appendix). While not as prominent on CNN, both conservative and
liberal biased media appear to have endeavored to overshadow the Trump Univer-
sity fraud case, thus attempting to influence the public agenda. Despite Fox News’s
and CNN’s attempt to set the public agenda regarding the presidential election, the
controversy surrounding the Trump University fraud settlement was searched more
because it was trending on social media (BBC News, Nov. 2016; Holt, 2016). In this
instance, the premise of a media-controlled agenda failed. Although the media did
not actively attempt to withhold information, the incident supports the notion that
traditional media no longer has a monopoly on setting public agendas since digital
media allows for a broader dissemination of information.
The media failing to influence the public agenda is not an anomaly any-
more. Throughout the Presidential election, Donald Trump received a nearly
endless amount of free attention because of his Twitter account (Confessore &
Yourish, 2016). Trump used Twitter as a platform and it received daily coverage.
His Twitter posts received mention in both the Republican primary and Presidential
debates (see Federal News Service, 2016 for transcript). Donald Trump effectively
set the election agenda through social media. His constant use of buzz words like
“Crooked Hillary” and “Make America Great Again” would receive more favorites
and retweets on average than standard campaign rhetoric (Mitchell, Holcomb, &
Weisel, 2016). Because of his effective use of Twitter, Trump controlled the media
agenda, which attempted to control the public agenda. Building on Trump’s aggres-
sive rhetoric toward Hillary, news outlets devoted 19 percent of Clinton’s coverage
to varying controversies. Overall, no less than 7 percent of total weekly coverage fo-
cused solely on varying facets of email scandal allegations. Trump’s media coverage

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 Survival of the Fittest: Social Media’s Influence on the Relationship between Traditional Media and the Public

allotted only 15 percent of coverage to controversies including but not limited to

the Trump Foundation, unreleased tax returns, avoiding federal taxes, system rigging
allegations, and sexual misconduct (Patterson, 2016). When examining social media
sentiment in July 2016, from a sample size of 28,131 Trump mentions, 8,113 (28.84
percent) were negative as opposed to Clinton’s sample of 25,186 mentions which
resulted in 5,721 (22.71 percent) negative sentiments (DeMers, 2016). Synthesizing
his Forbes article, DeMers notes that while the media tried to push an agenda that
devoted more time to Clinton controversies, the public focused more on Trump’s
shortcomings (DeMers, 2016). This resulted from increased social media usage, pro-
viding almost everyone from presidential candidates to interested citizens a platform
to voice their own opinions as well as engage with opposing views on a larger scale
rather than interpersonally discuss agreements or disagreements based on media
opinion.
The #NoDAPL movement is the most important example of the three
recent events because it displays the growing influence of reverse agenda-setting.
The Dakota Access Pipeline Project is an attempt to build a pipeline approximate-
ly 1,172 miles to connect and transport crude oil from Bakken and Three Forks
production areas in North Dakota to refineries in Patoka, Illinois. The project was
announced publicly on June 25, 2014, and landowners along the intended pipeline
route were provided informational hearings between August 2014 and January 2015.
Construction began early 2016 and was halted on December 4, 2016 on executive
order by President Obama, but construction resumed January 24, 2017 under exec-
utive order by President Trump. The largest reported controversies surrounding the
project involved potential environmental hazards and infringement on sacred Native
American territory (BBC News, Aug. 2016). Protests of the pipeline began with the
construction, largely to protect Native American sovereignty, specifically of local
Sioux tribes (Martin, 2016). Sacred Stone Camp was established in April 2016 by a
Standing Rock Sioux elder within the Standing Rock Indian Reservation as an act of
protest. It was not until September 2016 that mainstream media began to provide
significantly more coverage due to bulldozing of documented historic and sacred
land and the violent retaliations of protestors by site security and militarized police
spreading across social media platforms (Manning, 2016; Silva, 2016; BBC News,

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Aug. 2016). The increase in public attention is further corroborated when examin-
ing Google web search trends of “#NoDAPL” (the most commonly recognized
reference for the Dakota Access Pipeline protest). Figure 2 shows that #NoDAPL’s
initial peak lasted between September 4-10:

Beyond just searching for #NoDAPL information, individuals unable to journey

to Sacred Stone Camp took part in protests via social media, specifically Facebook.
As an act of solidarity, Facebook users encouraged one another to “check in” at
Standing Rock Indian Reservation (Kennedy, 2016). During the “check in” protest,
#NoDAPL reached its highest salience as shown in Figure 3:

#NoDAPL did not obtain national attention until it began to trend on social me-
dia platforms, which inevitably helped set the agenda for traditional media. As a
result, the reverse-agenda setting success of #NoDAPL demonstrates the potential
influence social media will continue to exhibit as digital technologies improve and
become more prevalent within society.

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Conclusion
As recent events have shown, Agenda-setting theory as it currently exists
requires important modifications. The Trump University settlement versus Hamil-
ton cast and the 2016 presidential election media coverage displayed that the media
was unsuccessful in directing the public’s attention to and from certain issues.
Similarly, the #NoDAPL movement displayed social media’s power to influence the
media’s agenda. These three events are not unique or isolated from each other; they
happened within the same year and had a significant impact on public discourse.
Like traditional media sources, media studies that rely on Agenda-setting
theory should evolve alongside the changing media landscape. The popularity
and ubiquity of social media has reached unprecedented levels of influence, and
it perpetually modifies itself to remain interesting and relevant to users (Albane-
sius, 2009). Because of these innovations in media and technology, the processes
of determining and delivering news to the public by traditional news outlets are
permanently altered and are subjected to future innovations and adaptations. Thus,
the assumption that traditional media is more influential in setting the public agenda
is outdated and should be revised to more accurately represent the dynamism new
media innovations have on news consumption.

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Appendix
Screenshots of Compared Search Terms from Fox News and CNN
All screenshots in Figure 4 were retrieved on December 16, 2016. I obtained these
by typing the quoted phrases into Google search engine and documented the results.
I used the terms “Trump University settlement” and “Hamilton cast” as broad
subject terms to have access to all relevant news articles and broadcast clips from
specified sources. I limited the site each time by “site:” to only search on the news
networks’ official sites.

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